‘No faith in the justice system’: Campbell River guard speaks out after suspect acquitted

Warning: This story contains graphic details of a stabbing. Reader discretion is advised.

A Campbell River security guard who was stabbed inside the city’s Walmart a year and a half ago is speaking out after the man accused of nearly killing him was found not guilty.

Ron Beavan says he’s lost faith in the justice system as he continues to come to terms with what happened, an incident that was all recorded on his wife’s body camera.

He and his wife, Leanne, were working there together as security guards, and she was following a man who had previously been banned from the store and who she believed was in the process of shoplifting.

Leanne Szasz Beaven says she had told the man to leave the store and he responded by showing her a knife.

She then called Ron on a two-way radio to inform him of the man’s presence, and then her body camera was recording as she walked up an aisle.

She can be heard yelling, “He’s got a knife.”

Then as she came up an aisle, she saw a man attacking her husband after the two had come face-to-face.

The suspect ran off and Beaven can be heard saying, “I’m cut, call an ambulance.”

A frantic scene follows as Leanne yells, “Call 911, call 911.”

Ron, who was wearing a protective vest, had been stabbed six times in his left arm and collar bone.

The blood was seen dripping out the arm of his shirt.

“By the time I got there, he had a hold of me in a lock, and he just went to town on my arm, stabbed the hell out of my arm, hit my main artery, and I could feel myself going down and starting to fade and finally he let go of me, and I said to the wife, ‘call the ambulance,'” Ron told CHEK News on Sunday.

“He started bleeding out immediately. It’s like you turned a tap on,” added Leanne Szasz Beaven.

In the video, she can be seen grabbing his arm and taking the harness from her body cam to use as a tourniquet.

She says two women, one a Walmart employee and former first responder, the other an emergency room nurse began caring for him immediately until an ambulance arrived.

“And if it wasn’t for them, he would not be here, he definitely wouldn’t be here, and that’s just not me saying that,” said Leanne.

Ron spent four days in the hospital and still suffers from nerve damage in his arm.

The suspect, Nathan Sprout, was arrested later that day and went to trial last October, charged with assault with a weapon, aggravated assault, and robbery.

Sprout was known to the Beavens, and several witnesses testified in Campbell River Supreme Court, but in March of this year, the judge ruled Sprout was not guilty on all charges.

The Beavens were stunned.

“He’s sitting right across from me, looking right at me like it’s a big joke because I couldn’t really identify him, but the wife knew who the hell he was,” said Ron.

“We were stunned. We didn’t even speak we just looked at each other across the table and had no words,” added Leanne.

CHEK News was not in court, and the judge’s remarks are not available online.

The Beavens say Sprout was found not guilty because the judge-only trial concluded there was enough reasonable doubt that it was him.

They say the man who attacked Ron was wearing a wig and COVID mask at the time.

“I have no faith in the justice system, there is none because there just is no justice. Look what’s going on, look what’s going on all over,” said Ron.

They’ve both taken on a few more security jobs since his recovery, but both of them are undergoing counselling for PTSD.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story stated an appeal was filed by the Crown. CHEK News has since learned that no appeal was pursued.

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